1st watched 12/29/2008 OK group of animated shorts presented by Mike Judge of "King of the Hill" and "Beavis and Butthead" fame and Don Herzfeld. Supposedly the DVD shows different shorts than the original theatrical release that traveled to various film festivals, so I this is definitely not a review of the original but instead of the DVD version but here goes with the version I viewed. The added 3 shorts to round out the feature by Don Herzfeld were fun, the three adventures of Ricardo are pretty bad, the three uncle, bother and cousin British claymation shorts were kind of strange and pretty serious stuff for this medium, which I guess is at least unique if nothing else. The short films surrounding these efforts were pretty good foreign entries but it doesn't make for a complete good film as a whole. Probably the best two were a video game-like entry where the character gets assimilated into an outdoor-like Cathedral and a computer animated entry about cloning. These thought-provoking entries surrounded by silly stuff doesn't make the feature flow very well. It would probably be better to watch a particular artist's shorts all the way thru instead of this weird mix, but maybe the original was better—I guess I will never know until they release it as it was in the theatres.

A collection of nineteen animated films. `Das Rad' is the story of the rise and fall of the human civilization as witnessed by two rocks. At the end conditions return to how they were before man and the human existence is seen as only one part of the cycle of the world. `Parking' is about a man who has a pristine parking lot ready to open when he discovers a weed. In his battle with the weed the parking lot is never opened. The moral of the story: keep the big picture in mind and don't get consumed by the details. Another, which is a look into the afterlife, depicts the torture of an inescapable eternity. A soldier who finds himself in heaven tries to kill himself, which takes him to purgatory, again tries to kill himself and ends up in hell where he is out of bullets. Last of my favorites was a Japanese cartoon in which a man who saves everything he finds grows a tree out of his head. People begin to live there. When he gets angry at their excesses he tears the trees from its roots creating a hole. But the hole gathers water and people still congregate. In the end the man, who is the symbolic conservationist, dies from the excesses of the people leading to the ultimate demise of nature. Some of the comedy pieces I didn't think were very funny but overall I would recommend seeing this for the above-mentioned films.

-- Light spoilers ahead --This is a collection of original and entertaining animation shorts, which I recommend for viewing without any reservations. There are very few parts which do not live up to the overall standard, and only while watching "Cathedral" I was longing for a fast-forward button. Highlights are the shorts by Don Hertzfeldt, especially the "Rejected" part, where he pretends to show his rejected commercial attempts for advertising the Family Learning Channel and some stupid consumer products. This is hilarious and over-the-top humor, sprinkled with gratuitous violence and cruelty (sometimes maybe a bit too much), very enjoyable. There is also a beautiful French short with music by Berlioz and drawings which look like impressionist paintings morphing into one another, though with a very dark and depressing mood to it. Then there is the Japanese flick about a man growing a cherry tree on his head, a German short about very slowly living stone people watching human civilization inventing the wheel, growing and finally destroying itself. There are beautiful and funny "short shorts" by Mike Judge, clay animation in "Ident", a great piece by Tim Burton on a boy identifying himself with Vincent Price (narrated by Vincent Price himself, all in verse), too much to be told here. Go and watch it, you won't regret it.

In a year of regurgitated ideas and mindless sequels, The Animation Show proves that there are still value left in the art of moving pictures. Don Hertzfeldt's simple yet excruciatingly genius segments hurdle you through a gaggle of shorts produced with love and thought. I was a bit surprised to see Mike Judge's contributions were small, but they are still welcome.The excerpt from Ward Kimball's "Mars and Beyond" animated film proves how the Disney company could once produce, in just a few minutes, something that contained more ingenuity than an entire 2 hour animated Disney film today. I still haven't mentioned the thought provoking shorts Mt. Head or Ident. And I'm sure this doesn't give justice to some of the other animated segments that deserve credit in this wonderful anthology.I beg of you all to see this collection while it is still in theaters so we may be blessed with a second volume come next year. Enjoy it while you can!